Pink Floyd fans figure out why Hey You was cut from The Wall movie

A song cut from a movie adaptation of The Wall was deemed “too depressing” to feature after a test screening.

Pink Floyd‘s legendary album was adapted to the big screen with an animated feature released in 1982. Hey You was originally included in the film but was later cut after the band’s bassist and songwriter, Roger Waters, deemed it too depressing. Director Alan Parker agreed, saying the song ruined the movie’s pacing, and so the song was cut. But the scene had already been recorded, and fans are now wondering what it looked like. Those interested can find out on the DVD edition of the film, with the deleted scenes, including the Hey You song scene.

One fan took to the r/PinkFloyd subreddit and asked: “Does anyone know why Hey You wasn’t used in The Wall movie? The lyrics advance the story and in general, it’s an excellent song.” A fan replied: “As I recall, Waters and Parker decided to scrap it during editing, as they thought it ruined the narrative flow and pacing of the film.”

Another added: “It’s on my DVD as an extra. Roger and Alan felt that something was wrong with it. Along with some other scenes, mind you.

“These two, creating a weird kinda Jesús Franco flick, about one of the greatest and biggest selling albums of all time, whose story is a heartfelt honest take on war and coming of age and fame and what not, thought that parts of it were either not weird enough, or simply just too weird. And then my mother says I’m crazy.”

A third added: “It’s a shame, as the footage used in montages has a better context here. And the sound remix of Hey You is interesting in the cut footage, as it is remixed like the rest of the music, and the keyboards are amazingly loud during the ‘could not break free’ parts.”

Describing the song in an interview on Radio One, Waters said: “Well, within his mind, because ‘Hey You’ is a cry to the rest of the world, you know saying hey, this isn’t right, but it’s also, it takes a narrative look at it, when it goes…

“Dave sings the first two verses of it and then there’s an instrumental passage and then there’s a bit that goes ‘but it was only fantasy’ which I sing, which is a narration of the thing; ‘the wall was too high as you can see, no matter how he tried he could not break free, and the worms ate into his brain.’ The worms.

“That’s the first reference to worms… the worms have a lot less to do with the piece than they did a year ago; a year ago they were very much a part of it, if you like they were my symbolic representation of decay. Because the basic idea the whole thing really is that if you isolate yourself, you decay.”